A Word on "Selfishness"

“When we don’t take the time for ourselves, to feed our spirit, our creativity, our own well, then we become selfish in spirit. Better we are selfish in time than in spirit.”

When we deny ourselves the time we need for ourselves, when we don’t feed our spirits with the gift of time and space, if that is what we yearn, then our body responds by becoming tight and holding on. If there is not enough for ourselves, then in the scheme of things, there is simply not enough. We hold back, we conserve, our energy diminishes and our generosity with it.
When we have time for self nurturing and self care, however we define that for ourselves, then we come from a place of abundance, there is plenty for everyone and we can give freely as there is plenty to give.
So to all the people, especially mothers, who are so busy taking care of everyone else and feel they are being selfish when they take time for themselves. Hear this, you are being selfish not to. When we have this idea of selfless giving, always putting others first and ourselves second, or even sometimes nowhere, we leave ourselves open to guilt. An ideal is hard to maintain and guilt is inevitable. Guilt just spins us into a spiral of ever increasing tightness of our generosity . To be able to give fully we need to be blossoming, to burst forth, and this requires nurturing.
Listen quietly to yourself and hear what it is you crave. Honour your authenticity by acting on it, giving it to yourself and then see how much more you’ll have to give. And lets just delete the word “selfish” from our vocabulary- its counterproductive, misleading and toxic.

“When I take that time and fuel up, I am just juicy and generous, and when I get run down, I can feel something in my system is greedy and not being fed, and then I start to label it as “I am being a selfish...,”

Danielle LaPorter